Chapter 52
Chapter Fifty-Two
He’s a stormwielder, but how?
Wielding ability passes down through bloodlines and—
Lightning strike me.
Turmah. She must’ve been carrying Faerynz’s child when she was forced to return to Tundrayn.
A startled gasp cuts through the darkness. Tormik whirls, shoulders tightening.
His daughter stares at him, pale as death.
Skies, had she not known? That her father…
My blood runs cold—all those storms in Tundrayn, the ones that had her cowering, crying, fucking fainting—they were all him.
“Mayah…” Tormik starts.
She barrels out of the tent like a storm, legs unsteady as she approaches her father.
A broken sob claws from her throat, one that splinters something deep inside me that I thought had already shattered into oblivion.
“It was you,” she whispers. Her arms wrap around her middle, her expression cracked with betrayal.
“Mayah,” Tormik repeats, his voice cold and stern. “You’re confused.”
Her face reddens with anger, eyes flashing.
“The lightning. I saw it. It was you.”
Tormik descends the steps and places his hands on her shoulders, but she pushes him away.
“All those nights I spent cowering in my bed,” she whispers. Her voice breaks. “Those storms. They were you. You’re a stormwielder.”
“Calm down,” he hisses. “You’re drawing attention.”
He’s right. Bleary-eyed warriors peer out from darkened tents. But my attention is on Mayah, on the utter heartbreak etched across her face.
“Turmah,” she whispers, blue eyes wide. “She was already with child when she returned.”
“You know nothing of what you speak!” Tormik shouts. He quickly masters his emotions, though, casting a quick glance at the warriors that have emerged, watching in silence.
“Return to your tents,” he says. “Recent events have made my daughter … sensitive. Perhaps it was wrong of me to send her to Arbinj. She is upset. The Commander has harmed her.”
“He has not!” Mayah shouts. “You have!”
I’ve never seen her like this—so enraged, so anguished. Not even when I murdered her love before her eyes.
“Admit it,” she pants, shoulders shaking. “Say the words.”
Skies damn me into ash.
Her mother was killed by a stormwielder.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tormik replies. If not for the iron binding me, I’m certain sharp pinpricks would be jabbing the back of my neck.
“Mama. Who killed her?”
Tormik folds his arms over his chest and steps around his raging daughter.
But Mayah doesn’t accept his dismissal quietly.
“It was you,” she hisses, whirling to face him.
“Sleep, Mayah,” Tormik calls over his shoulder. “You’ve embarrassed me enough for one night.”
Her shoulders vibrate with rage, hands clenched at her sides.
And then she attacks.
Her booted foot stomps into the ground, and a wall of water rises in front of Tormik, freezing into a glimmering block of ice.
The entire camp falls silent for a suspended heartbeat. Then, whispered murmurs of surprise erupt at once.
“…she can waterwield…”
“…it can’t be…”
“…did you know…”
Tormik slowly turns. His frosted eyes gleam with lethal rage.
“Yes, Mayah,” he snarls. “It was me. I made a mistake marrying Meerah. A filthy common.” He spits on the ground.
“I loved her. Treated her well. And still she asked for more.” A cold scoff.
“Always more. Just. Like. You. ‘Better treatment for nonwielders,’” he mocks with a sarcastic smile.
“Still, I could have lived with it. But she couldn’t, as it turns out. She ran.”
By the Skies.
“I would have let her go,” Tormik continues his confession. “It would have been a burden off my shoulders, truly. But she took you—my heir. That, I couldn’t forgive. So I came for you. To bring you home.”
“You told me it was Arbinj,” she seethes, her voice thick with tears.
Tormik fucking shrugs as if it’s of no consequence that he murdered her mother, then lied about it.
“Arbinj has harmed our women before. Our wives. Daughters. Mothers. They will do so again.”
“And all the storms?” Her voice splinters. “Why? Why put me through that?”
“I couldn’t stomach the fear the … experience left in you. I wanted to rid you of your weakness. I wanted to help you.”
Rage simmers behind my broken ribs. I want to burn him to ash.
Mayah raises her hands, poised to attack. Skies, there are too many wielders here for her to fight on her own. I strain against the metal shackles, but I can barely grip the metal.
Tormik tsks. “Accomplished wielder, you may be, but you’d be a fool to challenge us all.”
Mayah’s shoulders curl in on themselves for a heartbeat before straightening, as though she braced herself with sheer determination.
Her father freezes, hesitation flickering in his icy gaze.
“Mayah, no—” he warns.
But he’s too late.
She’s already bolted onto the platform, face a hard mask of resolve as she summons thin ribbons of water into the keyholes of my iron collar and shackles.
Click. Click. Click.
The iron falls to the ground, and so do I.